


This Year

by EmHunter



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Christmas Fluff, M/M, Mutual Pining, do not copy to another site, idiots to lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:55:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28310088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmHunter/pseuds/EmHunter
Summary: Victor and Yuuri are roommates.And it's Christmas.Without wanting to give anything away - it's roommates and Christmas with a happy ending. ^.^
Relationships: Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov
Comments: 38
Kudos: 132





	This Year

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SaerenDPity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaerenDPity/gifts).



> This is a Secret Santa for SaerenDPity. As long as the Christmas trees are still up - happy holidays. :)
> 
> Since I doubt I'll write roommates _or_ Yuuri as a dancer again, I included everything I think I want to write on these topics. It was meant to be a short little roommate AU and then it ran away with me until I even put my own fic on hold because I want to give every single work the time and effort and dedication they deserve from me. 
> 
> This Santa had two elves who helped me tremendously. Bunny and Sol - thank you so much for your constant support and for loving these two characters as much as I ended up loving them, and for cheering me on until the very last minute. This is for you, too. ❤️❤️

It started with a chocolate Santa.

Yuuri brought it home from class, explaining that his professor had insisted on giving everyone a small St. Nicholas gift. It wasn’t that Yuuri didn’t eat chocolate per se. He just didn’t like cheap chocolate, it gave him spots. But it looked cute enough, and he supposed the human trash can when it came to cheap, unhealthy food he shared an apartment with would gladly take it off his hands.

His roommate, however, did no such thing.

Victor placed it on the living room bookshelf with a small assortment of chocolate Christmas tree ornaments in pretty wrappers that _he_ had been given for St. Nicholas and decided he couldn’t possibly eat because they were so decorative. 

“I thought we weren’t doing Christmas,” Yuuri said, while he rearranged the small chocolates so that the colours harmonised a little more.

“We aren’t,” Victor said, while he freed a small chocolate bell from its pink foil wrapper and ate it.

* * *

The wreath came next.

A few days after the chocolate Santa moved in, Victor came back from his Sunday morning bread roll hunt and placed it in the middle of the low living room table they normally rested their feet on when they hung out watching TV.

“The lady in the bakery downstairs wanted to throw this away because her daughter bought her a real one,” Victor explained to Yuuri, who had left his own breakfast on the kitchen table to see what was going on.

They stood at opposite ends of the coffee table, looking down at the thick wreath of artificial fir branches, the green just a tad off and giving away its fake nature as much as the immaculate shape of every wound branch that one never found this identical in nature. The wreath was decorated with Christmas-red bows, and four tall red candles sat on the metal candlesticks cleverly hidden by the fake fir. 

“And we can already light the first one today!” Victor beamed and went to find a lighter in that one drawer of the living room desk that held that assortment of mismatched odds and ends that nobody ever knew where to place except for that one drawer where they were all in reach if need be.

“We’re not even Christian, this doesn’t mean anything to either of us,” Yuuri frowned when Victor came back. He knew that in the weeks leading up to Christmas, a new candle was lit every Sunday until all four candles were lit on the fourth Sunday of Advent.

“It’s candle light. It means cosy,” Victor argued and lit the first candle.

* * *

“No,” Yuuri said two evenings later when Victor asked him whether he was going home for Christmas.

Victor caught him frowning and hoped it had nothing to do with the can of fish he was currently opening, but only with the potted poinsettia that now throned in the middle of the kitchen table. Luckily Yuuri didn’t say anything. He just placed a bowl of steaming miso soup next to the plain white rice he had already set down. The raw egg he’d cracked over it much to Victor’s disgust had already started to settle. It still looked gross.

“We don’t really celebrate Christmas in Japan,” Yuuri said as he slid into the kitchen chair to Victor’s right.

“Mhmm, in Russia neither,” Victor hummed more than he said. He caught another frown on Yuuri’s face, this one more prominent, when he looked up from his cold dinner of canned sprats in tomato sauce and dark rye bread. Victor cocked one eyebrow as if to say, ‘Is there a problem, Raw Egg Person?’ Yuuri seemed to understand him without difficulty. He swallowed down whatever comment he’d had on his tongue.

“It’s more of a couple’s thing in Japan, Christmas,” he said instead and put a cube of tofu from his miso soup in his mouth. “But I would give a limb for a Japanese Christmas cake. I wanted to make one myself but you just cannot get decent strawberries here in winter, and in strawberry season it feels… wrong. New Year is the big family holiday in Japan. I wanted to go home for that but…” Yuuri fell silent.

“But?” Victor asked softly.

Yuuri huffed. “Flights cost a fortune, and I have to practise so much for my exam at the end of term.”

Victor ate one of the small squares he had cut his bread into and washed it down with a sip of tea.

“In Russia Christmas is not until January 7th, so I was thinking, over the Christmas break I’ll make some traditional food and pig out on the sofa watching trashy socialist movie adaptations of Russian fairy tales.”

“So you’re Russian Orthodox as well as Christian now?” Yuuri asked.

Looking up from the next bread square he was just picking up with two fingers, Victor found Yuuri grinning. It looked mischievous, and made Victor’s heart do a silly flip. He liked that Yuuri was smart. That they had undergone similarly stringent, all-encompassing education. That he could mention random things in world history or art or general knowledge and Yuuri actually knew what he was talking about. His roommate before Yuuri hadn’t had a clue about what happened outside the borders of his own country, ever.

Victor tilted his head, eyes on Yuuri. “You’re welcome to join me if you like.”

“I probably _will_ like,” Yuuri said after a pause and some very intense studying of the behaviour of the grains of rice in his bowl. “The dance studio closes over Christmas and all my friends will still be on their break.”

Victor felt at a loss for words, so he kept on eating. Before he said something stupid.

After shovelling a couple of spoons of rice into his mouth, Yuuri put the bowl down and looked at Victor. “So what kind of food are you making?”

Victor had to give it a moment’s thought. He hadn’t exactly planned a menu. “I’ll probably call home and ask for recipes,” he said at last. And sighed when a memory came over him. “I miss my mother’s _kulebyáka_. I’ve never made one of those myself, perhaps I should give it a try.”

“What is it?” Yuuri asked, the other bowl in both hands and at his lips. He kept his eyes on Victor, but the rest of his face was hidden as he drank his miso soup straight from the bowl.

“It’s like a pastry, filled with salmon and buckwheat and vegetables… wow.” Victor fell silent. “Can just talking about a dish actually make you feel homesick?”

Yuuri didn’t reply. His lashes came to rest against his cheeks as he drank more miso soup with downcast eyes.

* * *

Over the following days more and more Christmas decorations appeared all over their shared apartment. Twinkling tree-shaped fairy lights strung across the living room window. A big paper Santa cut-out dangling outside their front door. A penguin figure with a sleigh that had no other purpose but to collect dust where it sat on top of the shoe cabinet in the hallway. An illuminated plastic snowman that glowed in different colours on the right side of the wreath on their coffee table.

One evening Yuuri came home from dance practice and frowned a little when he saw Victor on the couch, spooning one of his no doubt doubtful dinners into his mouth while watching TV. Slightly irritated, Yuuri hid the new bag of chocolate ornaments in his coat pocket. He had meant to replace them unnoticed; they kept getting fewer and fewer with each passing day. Yuuri could have sworn he had eaten only one. Three at most. Then he remembered it was Wednesday and his frown disappeared.

Victor returned his greeting as Yuuri made his way past the back of the couch to the kitchen where he reheated the rice he had cooked earlier in the microwave and fixed himself a quick dinner.

“What did I miss?” Yuuri asked as he slid down on the couch beside Victor, dinner and chopsticks in his hands. The first candle was lit on the advent wreath. It looked new, the red not quite the same as the original ones the wreath had come with. Clearly it had been replaced already too. Victor really liked candle light.

“Not much.” Victor pointed at the Christmas edition of Celebrity Bake-off on their TV screen with his spoon, where currently a famous figure skater who was competing on the show with his model wife frantically rushed around between his workstation and hers. “It’s just the first round. They have to make a tart.”

Yuuri nodded and they watched in silence for a bit, each eating their dinner.

“He’s hopeless,” Yuuri commented drily as they observed the figure skater kneel down and peer into his oven, then exclaim in a panic that his tart wasn’t cooked.

“You should have seen him ten minutes ago when his pastry wasn’t enough and he asked his wife to help out. ‘Honey? Do you have any leftover pastry? Mine’s not enough!’”

Yuuri laughed at Victor’s quite accurate imitation of the man’s voice. “Honey is probably wishing for him to drop out in this round so she bake in peace and go all the way to the final.”

Yuuri had picked his favourites quite early on. He was always right about the finalists.

Victor’s nostrils flared just the smallest, adorable bit as he frowned at the bowl of rice with _natto_ in Yuuri’s hands. Yuuri was currently stirring a little _natto_ into the rice, drawing unappetising strings of slime with his chopsticks.

“Yuuuuuri! How can you eat this? It’s downright disgusting.”

Yuuri looked up, and he grinned at Victor all the way up to his eyes around a mouthful of rice topped with _natto_ and chopped spring onions. He clearly enjoyed his dinner.

“You’re eating cooked buckwheat with butter, you have no room to talk.” Yuuri nodded at the bowl in Victor’s hands once he had swallowed. “The only right way to eat buckwheat is soba.”

Victor huffed, but it was drowned out by the presenter on TV calling out the last two minutes.

“You know…” Victor said after another while, without averting his face from the TV screen where the whole group of celebrities was asking each other what a Bûche de Noël was as they had to make one in the technical and most of them were panicking because they had never seen one or even heard of it.

“They’re _all_ hopeless.” Yuuri stabbed his chopsticks in the air in the direction of the TV.

“Chopped spring onions are nice on cooked buckwheat too,” Victor said as if there had been no diversion.

“Uh huh.” It was just a non-committal sound at the back of Yuuri’s throat.

The next time Yuuri moved it was not to lean forward and reach for his glass on the table in front of them. The smell of what Victor knew was some fancy Japanese hair product made him feel a little breathless when Yuuri leant over and brought his bowl as close to Victor’s as possible so that the chopped spring onions he transferred with his chopsticks in two expert helpings would land in the bowl and not on the couch between them. Before Victor had even time to enjoy the moment Yuuri was back in his spot, leaning back against the upholstery and stirring toppings into his rice as if nothing had happened.

“Thank you, Yuuri!” Victor grinned at the TV screen.

“You’re welcome.” Yuuri smiled at the food in his bowl.

* * *

Two candles were lit on the advent wreath when Yuuri came home from a long and arduous Sunday practice. He saw Victor on the couch, heard his quiet greeting but was left wondering why he did not even look at him. Instead, he seemed very immersed in whatever he was watching on TV. Yuuri made straight for the kitchen, put the kettle on and grabbed a cup of instant noodles. He was too tired to cook. While he waited, he tried one of the cinnamon star cookies he had baked the other day. They were delicious, if he said so himself. He could have guessed, judging by how quickly Victor went through the plate set out on the kitchen table, but then Yuuri knew what and how Victor ate and wasn’t sure if this was anything to go by.

The music he could hear from the TV was beautiful, luring, almost. Yuuri’s legs wanted to come up with a routine to it spontaneously, although he would also have been happy waltzing through an empty hall to this.

“What are we watching?” he asked as he slid into his usual seat beside Victor on the couch, cup of steaming instant noodles in one hand and chopsticks in the other.

“My favourite Christmas movie.” Victor gave him a brief smile with a sideways glance. “It’s a Cinderella adaptation, an absolute classic.”

Yuuri nodded and tried to eat his instant noodles without a sound. It was harder not to slurp than he had reckoned. He understood most of what was said in the movie, and felt he could get the gist of the rest. It was Cinderella after all.

“She’s asked him to bring her the first thing that comes before his nose,” Victor explained in one scene when Yuuri only turned his face towards him, before Yuuri could even ask his question. Yuuri closed his mouth again and nodded.

The first thing that came before the servant’s nose turned out to be three magical nuts that cracked open at crucial moments and revealed what Cinderella wished for the most at that point. Yuuri couldn’t remember this having been in the original fairytale, but he very much preferred it over the severed toes and the blood in the shoes that he remembered definitely having been in it.

“If it didn’t sound all wrong I would make a comment now about how great it would be to have magic nuts,” Victor said when Cinderella and her prince rode off into their happily ever after.

Yuuri didn’t say anything. But his cheeks felt exceedingly pink where they were visible over the collar of his sweater he had pulled up in an attempt to hide his face.

* * *

“Yuuri!”

Yuuri nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard Victor’s voice outside his door. He dropped his phone on his bed and reached for his discarded shirt from the night before, quickly dragged it over his head and pushed his arms into the sleeves, even though he knew Victor would never come in unless he told him to.

“I’m off!” Victor called from the hallway. “Your tea’s on the counter, in case you forgot!”

Right, Yuuri thought. He had been in the kitchen in just his leggings, interrupting his morning stretchesto quickly make his cup of tea when he heard Victor singing in the shower. Unfortunately Victor had cut his shower short and Yuuri had bolted back to his room when he heard the water stop, leaving his tea on the counter.

“I won’t. Thank you,” Yuuri called back. He felt his hair sticking up and crackling with static.

“See you tonight!” Victor already sounded further away, faint steps retreating.

“Bye!”

Yuuri waited until the front door slammed shut, and then a couple minutes more just in case. He was still in his leggings, his shirt barely long enough to cover the whole of his butt. Opening his door slowly he peeked outside. The hallway was deserted, the apartment quiet. He still waited a couple of minutes more, in case Victor had forgotten something. Sometimes he did. Yuuri would have been mortified being caught in his oldest pair of leggings. They were too ratty, too tight. But it was laundry day, and Yuuri was not confident at all of his looks. He was always fully and accurately dressed when he walked around the apartment. He didn’t even make a dash from the bathroom to his room with nothing but a towel around his waist. Never.

When he was sure at last that he was alone for the larger part of the day, he went back inside his room to retrieve the shopping bag from under his bed. The cans of condensed milk clacked together as he put the bag the right way up and lifted the box out. He had already looked at the skillet the night before, now he took it out of the bubble wrap and softly rustling tissue paper it had come packed in.

Yuuri carried everything to the kitchen, set out the rest of the ingredients on the counter and his phone with the recipe beside them. His green tea had gone bitter by now, so he poured it into the sink and made a new cup. While he was slowly sipping it, he studied the recipe for the umpteenth time.

Then he got to work.

* * *

When Victor came home to an empty apartment that evening and switched on the light in the kitchen, his jaw dropped. Right in the middle of the table, next to the poinsettia, sat a large china plate with a Christmas design he was sure had not been a part of their interior until now. On it, arranged to form a neatly stacked pile, were more _oreshki_ than he had ever seen since he had moved over here.

His mouth watered almost involuntarily, and memories crashed over him with the power of a wave so strong that he slumped down on the nearest chair under the impact. He had grown up with these walnut shaped cookies that were a part of every special occasion back home. He could almost hear the laughter in his mind now, the loud talking, and his father’s deep baritone voice singing sad folk songs after enough food and drink, and then he would have another vodka and sing three happy songs. For a moment Victor was Vitya and back at a different kitchen table, a knife in his hand and his mouth blowing at an impertinent wisp of his hair that was so much longer then and tickling his skin where it fell into his face, as he helped his mother cut countless cookies shaped like walnut halves from the baked plates she took carefully from the skillet.

It was a tedious work, making _oreshki_.

But it was so worth it. And so… Victor swallowed down the emotion. Special.

A note was propped up beside the plate, written in Yuuri’s neat handwriting. It made Victor laugh and remember the movie they had watched together the other day. He hadn’t reckoned that Yuuri would remember too. That his idiotic comment would give Yuuri ideas.

_It was the first recipe that came before my nose. I hope they are okay._

_Okay?!_ , Victor almost snorted out loud. He reached for one of the nuts. They were immaculate on the outside, meticulous like everything Yuuri did. Baked golden brown, and just as crispy as they were meant to be. Victor ate the first one slowly, savouring every sensation. Inside, they were out of this world. The filling was the much missed sweet and creamy comfort of caramel and condensed milk. There was the slightest bit of crunch, which told him that the cookie scraps cut off around the nut shapes had been crumbled and added to the filling. Just like his mother used to do. It tasted of quickening heartbeat. It tasted of home.

“Perfect!” Victor said to the empty apartment. Christmas suddenly felt a lot more like Christmas.

His smile around a second cookie was a lot dreamy, and just a little sad.

* * *

Victor was reading an essay on the representation of gender roles in the works of James Joyce at the kitchen table, absentmindedly eating his way through an unhealthy breakfast of gingerbread cookies Yuuri had made, when the bathroom door flew open and Yuuri stormed out. He was cursing loudly in what Victor could only assume was very colourful Japanese until he could make out several f-words and the words ‘stupid’, ‘alarm’, and ‘late’.

This, however, was not what made the piece of gingerbread get stuck in Victor’s throat as Yuuri came running into the kitchen and started busying himself right in Victor’s back, filling the kettle with water and rummaging around hurriedly in their tea compartment.

Yuuri was naked. Well, almost. His hair was still wet from the shower and he wore nothing but a pair of tight boxer shorts. And socks.

Wheezing and coughing, and thinking that choking on gingerbread at the sight of _this_ would at least be a good way to go, Victor tried to get the crumbs dislocated from his throat, reaching for his tea to wash them down. It sloshed over his plate when the flat of Yuuri’s hand connected with his back, patting him with a firm gentleness two, three times, until Yuuri raced past him again and headed for his room.

Tears running from his eyes and crumbs tickling his throat, Victor stared longingly at the delectable shape of Yuuri’s bubble butt in the tight boxer shorts until Yuuri disappeared inside his room and the door slammed shut.

“Oh god,” Victor croaked to nobody in particular and picked up his phone to text his best friend.

_> > I am so gay._

Georgi’s reply was immediate.

_< < I’ve known that for 20 years. Tell me something I don’t know._

* * *

Victor’s last lecture before the Christmas break was cancelled because the professor got sick with tonsillitis and resorted to emailing his students details about the assignment he wanted them to hand in instead. Victor came home in the middle of the afternoon, surprised to find the apartment unlocked. Normally Yuuri was at practice every day until late, working on a choreography for his big dance exam coming up at the end of the semester.

The door to Yuuri’s room stood partly open. And Victor, who had been inside Yuuri’s room perhaps a handful of times in the year since Yuuri had moved in, couldn’t help himself as he walked by on the way to his own room. He had to glance inside.

He wished he hadn’t.

Yuuri was sitting on the floor, dressed in sweat pants and a T-shirt that clung to his back, drenched with sweat. His feet were bare. And he was not alone.

Between Yuuri’s legs on the floor, back pressed against Yuuri’s chest, sat a woman.

And the position they were in, sitting entangled on the floor, and the sounds they made, panting, made heat rise to Victor’s face and his stomach clench in knots because he knew he shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t be seeing this. He shouldn’t be prying on this very personal, very intimate moment he had stumbled and started snooping upon.

They were trembling.

Yuuri was holding her. Yuuri was holding this woman as closely and fiercely as you would only hold a person that means so much that it’s impossible to feel their every emotion without feeling them yourself.

“It really hurts!” The woman was sobbing out the words more than she spoke them.

“I’m sorry!” Yuuri was wrapping both arms and legs around her, his face contorted in honest pain as he pressed his temple against hers, his mouth close to her ear. “I am so, _so_ sorry!”

Victor quietly stepped away. His feet felt like lead. Everything felt like lead. There was no doubt whatsoever about what was happening here. Yuuri had asked his girlfriend over while he knew Victor would be out. And now he was breaking up with her and it was painful even to see. Victor opened and closed the door to his room without a sound. He leaned with his back against the inside for a moment, heart hammering in his chest, stomach still in knots while he felt something like nausea rise inside him.

Of course, Victor thought. He had never asked. He had just hoped, believed, and made assumptions. It shouldn’t feel like this, this overwhelming sensation that after one year of sharing an apartment, he knew so much about Yuuri and didn’t know Yuuri at all.

Yuuri was attending a university of the arts which had a rare dance and choreography programme. Scholarships for international students were even rarer, and yet Yuuri had gotten one, so he had to be really good. Not that Victor had ever seen him dance. He heard the music from Yuuri’s room sometimes but was never sure whether he was actually practising or just working out.

Yuuri had the standard pitch black thick Asian hair that was often unruly no matter what the fancy products lined up in their bathroom seemed to promise in their foreign writing. Yuuri also had dark soulful eyes behind his dark-framed glasses and more often than not a little scowl between his brows that Victor could never tell whether it was shyness or irritation. Yuuri insisted on a daily bathroom cleaning schedule and strict trash separation, and he preferred it if their things in the fridge were clearly divided with space between them. Yuuri stocked his side of the fridge and kitchen cupboard with vegetables and vast amounts of rice and assorted groceries and condiments in cute, colourful packages with all-Japanese writing Victor liked to look at, guessing what they might be. Yuuri had a weakness for pastries and liked watching baking shows and trying recipes far more than was probably called for in an upcoming professional dancer and choreographer. Yuuri knew about five words in the local language and spoke English with a thick Japanese accent that had a touch of high school exchange in Detroit, and when he spoke Japanese on the phone to his family, his normally soft voice sounded deeper and choppier.

Victor was hopelessly in love with him.

He sat on his bed for a moment. Stared at the Kolpashnikov print on the opposite wall until he realised he found it impossible not to think about what was happening on the other side of that wall right now.

Victor shook his head. He craved some strong black tea with lots of sugar. That always helped.

Luckily he didn’t have to pass Yuuri’s room on the way again, he thought, as he sneaked from his room to the kitchen, where he put the kettle on and heaped a generous helping of his favourite tea into the filter. He picked some dried, crumpled leaves off the poinsettia while he waited for the water to boil. The plate of _oreshki_ , fewer in numbers now, seemed to mock him. It was completely and utterly ridiculous, Victor knew, but how much more ridiculous could his day possibly become if he allowed himself to be a little more silly than he already was? While the bubbling of heating water became louder in the kettle, Victor reached for one of the nut shaped cookies. He played it around his fingers for a moment, brow crinkled in thought. If he _had_ been making a wish, this would have been the moment to do so.

There was no magical twinkling sound when he put the small round cookie in his mouth and closed his eyes. But there was the faint creak of the door to Yuuri’s room opening all the way.

Victor’s eyes shot open when he heard the voices. Today was clearly not his day. They were already in the living room, coming closer. And the kettle was just boiling. He would look like a complete idiot if he ran away now. Victor knew this. So he squared his shoulders and plastered a smile on his face as he turned around.

“Victor! You’re home.” Yuuri pushed his glasses up his nose. He seemed flustered. Of course he did.

The woman kept close to Yuuri’s side. She walked a little funny, Victor noted. Not that he paid that close attention. But Yuuri turned aside at this moment to put her fully on display.

“This is my roommate, Victor,” Yuuri said to her. She looked up, eyes red from crying. Of course she did. Anyone would cry their heart out when Yuuri broke up with them.

“Hi!” Victor did a little wave.

“Victor, this is Sophie, one of my dancing teachers. I asked her over to practise a routine I want to dance in my end-of-semester exam. But I messed up and I think she got hurt.”

“I’m fine. Hello.” She hobbled over, trying not to put pressure on her left leg, and reached out for Victor with one hand. Victor shook the hand offered to him, hoping the frown between his brows was not too obvious.

“Yuuri here thinks he rendered me incapable of ever dancing again.” She threw a smirk in Yuuri’s direction.

Now, Victor didn’t know the first thing about dancing other than black and white ballet performances on his parents’ TV but the way she winced when she tried to stand on her left leg seemed to him like Yuuri had every right to be so agitated. Victor looked at the plate of _oreshki_ on the table because he didn’t know where else to look. He would have felt rude turning his back on them and making tea now. Yuuri’s dancing teacher, the _oreshki_ seemed to say. Not his girlfriend. Victor shook his head and averted his eyes from them.

“I have had much worse injuries.” Sophie sat down on the chair Yuuri was pulling out for her. But she did not hesitate to put up her leg on the other chair which Yuuri was turning around and pushing towards her.

“It’s still my fault!” Yuuri’s face was bright red, his hair even mussier when he ran one restless hand through it. “It’s a difficult choreography, maybe we tried too much too soon, didn’t warm up properly…”

“Yuuri Katsuki, I’ve been dancing since you were in nappies, don’t tell me what’s too difficult for me!” Sophie pulled up her knee and touched her ankle, then winced and put the foot back down. “Besides, I’d never be able to call myself a dance instructor if Pink can do this and I can’t.”

Victor, who had been looking back and forth between the two of them, frowned. He felt caught when he met Yuuri’s eyes. There was no way Yuuri could have missed the confusion on Victor’s face.

“There’s this Pink video, Try,” Yuuri said to Victor by means of explanation. “It has this amazing dancing in it. So intense. I want to perform this dance in my exam, and Sophie has agreed to help me, standing in as the female part. Of course now I don’t know…”

He turned to Sophie again. “We need to get you to the hospital!”

“Home will be fine, Yuuri. Just get me home. I already texted Paul to pick me up and meet me downstairs.” She raised her phone with one hand. Victor wondered where she could possibly have had that hidden in what was obviously her dancing outfit.

“Your husband will kill me,” Yuuri remarked. It sounded gloomy.

“He won’t,” she replied cheerfully. “Although his gay crush on you might suffer a little.”

Yuuri groaned.

Victor was still staring at the front door long after Yuuri had left through it, offering his shoulder to Sophie to lean on as she hopped on her right leg and tried not to put pressure on the left. The moment he was sure he was alone he made a dash for his room, grabbed his laptop and looked up that Pink video.

Victor never made his tea that day. He watched the video over and over again, marvelling wide-eyed at the powerful intensity of the two people dancing in it and trying not to imagine Yuuri and himself in their place. He muttered “Oh fuck…oh fuck…oh fuck…” a million times over the thought that a whole roomful of examiners and fellow students would get to see Yuuri push someone’s thighs apart and raise their hips up from the floor with just the strength of one bare foot hooked underneath their butt.

He didn’t come out for dinner either. It was probably just as well. After the emotional Yuuri rollercoaster he had been on since the moment he arrived home, food was the last thing on his mind.

* * *

“Morning.”

Yuuri looked up from his book. And straight back down at it. Victor, stepping out of his room, didn’t notice. He was yawning so much behind one hand it made his eyes squeeze shut.

“Morning,” Yuuri replied casually. He reached for his mug of tea and brought it to his mouth.

Victor’s bare feet made a faint tap-tap-tap sound as he walked over from his room through the living room and into the kitchen. Yuuri noticed from the corner of his eye that he was clad in his usual pair of tight black underpants that Yuuri knew he slept in. When he moved around behind Yuuri’s back, filling the kettle with water and angling for his favourite black tea from the cabinet, he came close enough that Yuuri feared their backs would brush in passing. He thought he could feel the sleep-induced warmth of a person that had just fallen out of bed. Yuuri’s brows crinkled in concentration as he read over the most recent paragraph. Again.

The tap-tap-tap of bare feet moved away from the kitchen and towards the bathroom while the kettle started boiling with the first very quiet sounds of water starting to heat up.

Yuuri glanced up very briefly and caught a glimpse of long, pale legs and firm buttocks hugged snugly by black cotton. He didn’t need to see more. He knew those legs were toned. Victor worked out somewhere when he wasn’t studying. Victor was quite confident of his looks. He walked around their apartment in his underwear all the time, parading his chiselled features and creamy white skin and toned chest and stomach.

Not that Yuuri paid that close attention.

The bathroom door closed behind Victor while behind Yuuri, Victor’s tea water started to boil.

In front of Yuuri, his book on Motion Analysis and Body Theories seemed to mock him. 

* * *

“Phichiiiiiit.” Yuuri’s arm slid halfway across the cafeteria table and narrowly missed the half eaten mince pie sitting forlornly on a small plate where it had been discarded after Yuuri took one bite out of it and decided it lacked in just about everything. “What am I going to do??”

“Hot Roommate show off the goods in his small, small briefs again?”

Phichit, a fellow student who was something like Yuuri’s closest friend over here even though he studied Costume Design, threw him a glance past the side of the small compact mirror he was checking his face in.

Yuuri groaned like a man in great pain as he sat up straight.

“Okay, Yuuri.” Phichit snapped the mirror shut and placed it beside his phone on the table. “Here’s what I would do, thought it might seem to you like a revolutionary concept: Just! Tell! Him!”

“I can’t. I’ve tried. I keep refilling the chocolate ornaments he keeps eating…”

Phichit raised an immaculately plucked eyebrow at this.

“Okay. That _we both_ keep eating. I bake cookies… I even bought this ridiculously expensive skillet online to make those Russian nut cookies because of that movie he likes so much, but he doesn’t seem to get the message!”

“ _Not_ the same thing as saying the words!” Phichit huffed dramatically. “Here’s another tip that has worked for me and many other people before: Get! Drunk! Then tell him. I mean, not completely hammered so that you throw up on his feet or something, but just a little. For courage.”

Yuuri’s eyes grew huge and wide behind his glasses. “I cannot drunk confess to Victor. I won’t!”

“Why not?” Phichit threw up both hands. “He’s just some guy!”

“He’s _not_ just some guy!” Yuuri protested.

Victor was a Literature major with two minors out of which he hated one (philosophy) and loved the other (French). Like most literature students he had a passion for writing and had won some smaller contests for writing in English as a non-native speaker. Not that Yuuri had ever read anything by him. Victor liked to write poetry at the kitchen table, often staring into nothing with a dreamy stance in his eyes before he wrote into a large Moleskine notebook with an expensive brand pen. Yuuri saw the notebook lying open on the kitchen table sometimes but was too polite and too chicken to ever take a sneak peek at any of Victor’s notes.

Victor had the most intriguing hair Yuuri had ever come across, of a unique silver colour, short but with long bangs in the front that usually fell over his left eye and were practically begging to be flicked back with one graceful turn of the head not unlike old shampoo commercials. Victor’s hair was always immaculately styled, and he owned just as many fancy hair products lined up in their bathroom as Yuuri did; Yuuri had counted. Victor also had the bluest eyes Yuuri had ever seen, and a heart-shaped smile like nobody else. Victor smiled a lot, especially when he saw dogs, and when he was actually salty and repressing a frown. Victor left dirty dishes in the sink and used tea bags on saucers until they stuck and left remnants of the label that were really hard to scrub off. Victor could go through a whole bag of Russian confectionery in one TV evening and not feel sick, or hyper from all the sugar. Victor stocked his side of the fridge and kitchen cupboard with pickles and vast amounts of buckwheat and assorted fish in stacked, flat cans that Yuuri didn’t even want to know what they might be. Victor had a weakness for heavy Russian food and even heavier literature and music, and more often than not Yuuri would find a thick Tolstoy novel on the edge of the bathtub or hear Russian choral music from Victor’s room that would have depressed the most cheerful of men. Victor was fluent in the local language and three others as well, and whenever he spoke it was warm and enticing and only the prominent rolling of the ‘r’ gave away his Russian heritage.

Yuuri was crushing on him so hard he didn’t know what to do with himself.

Phichit, of course, had his very own theory about him, just like he had on everything. “I think he’s into you as well,” he was just saying, waving his water bottle around. “The amount of times he’s prancing around in his underwear in front of you alone.”

Yuuri glared at him. “ _Your_ roommate is straight and also walking around his underwear all the time. Or naked. What does that tell you?”

“Okay, bad example.” Phichit relented. He unscrewed the lid of his water bottle and drowned everything he still wanted to say on the matter.

Yuuri dumped his face into the snug little cave his curled arms made on the table. It was perfect to sigh into.

* * *

“Victor?”

The careful knock was followed by Yuuri’s voice, calling out quietly from outside.

Victor closed his laptop and got up from his desk to open the door.

“Yuuri. Hi.” Victor beamed at him. Yuuri looked soft, and cuddly, dressed in a thick, cream-coloured sweater.

“Hi.” Yuuri smiled.

_Oh._ Victor thought.

“Would you like to have dinner with me?” Yuuri’s cheeks became a little pinker with every word. “I tried a new recipe… I would like your opinion.”

“Yuuri, that’s very sweet of you, but I was just going to have my usual buckwheat…” Victor started. He was pretty sure he could hear Georgi’s voice in his head at this moment, asking him in crisp, staccato Russian what the hell was wrong with him.

“There’s no need to. You’ll see.” Yuuri smiled again. It really was very unfair, Victor thought.

“I’d love to,” he heard himself say.

Four candles were lit on the advent wreath, and for some reason there was now also a new Santa figure beside it. It was made out of a thick tree branch sawn diagonally so that the cross section had been painted with a beardy face and red hat. The coffee table had been laid with plates and cutlery, wreath and decoration moved towards the corner to make room in the middle for a very Japanese looking serving platter holding…

“ _Kulebyáka!_ ” Victor said, and then he didn’t say anything for a couple of minutes.

He sank down into his accustomed seat on the couch at Yuuri’s insistence and watched Yuuri cut into the crusty outside with its intricate leaf pattern and a hole like a little funnel in the middle. And Victor saw. There was no need for his usual bowl of cooked buckwheat because buckwheat was right there.

This was not the shop-bought puff pastry Victor had been thinking of wrapping around some salmon and hoping for the best. It was a homemade brioche shell, and the salmon in the centre was enclosed by a mix of buckwheat kasha and butter rice. But the shell was not soggy. On closer inspection Victor saw there was something like an extra layer sealing the shell off from the juicy filling. A thin, pale green crepe that tasted like spinach and at the same time so much more. Spices. Salty bacon.

“This is amazing!” Victor lowered his fork, hurried to swallow down the mouthful to give Yuuri an answer.

Yuuri who was watching him so expectantly, that adorable blush still in his cheeks.

“It really is. I can never tell my mother of course that this is even better than hers.” He winked. “Where did you get this recipe?”

“From an anime.” Yuuri started to laugh and finally picked up his own plate and fork. 

_Oh_. Victor thought again, casting stolen glances at Yuuri while he ate another forkful, thinking how the rice and buckwheat, each of their favourite dinner components, complemented each other so well.

Yuuri looked up and grinned at him, widely, around the fork in his mouth.

* * *

On Christmas Eve, Victor was typing on the couch with his laptop on his knees. He was just about done with the assignment for this cancelled class, and reached for the saucer holding a small selection of _oreshki_ he had promised himself as a reward. He knew it was pathetic, but he gave the last one from this helping a bit of a pointed glare when he played it between his fingers a couple of times.

“Here goes nothing,” he muttered before he popped it into his mouth. His eyes were still closed when he heard the scratching and scraping of metal on metal that comes with the unmistakable search for the keyhole with an unsteady hand. After several attempts, he finally heard the latch of the key in the lock. The front door swung open and Yuuri danced in.

He had been out for a drink with some friends, celebrating Christmas and the beginning of their holiday, and the last day of the Christmas markets before they closed down. And he had asked Victor to come along, but Victor had declined. With a heavy heart, and a lot of wrath for his professor who insisted on them handing in a ten-page assignment by Christmas Day.

In the hallway, Yuuri wrestled with his coat, hat, scarf and shoes. He won, eventually.

He was obviously quite drunk. And he was singing. Loudly.

“ _Laaaast Christmas, I gave you my heart_ …Victooooor!” He paused in the entry to the living room, gaze narrowing in on Victor like a hunter singling out his prey.

Victor closed his laptop and placed it on the coffee table before he slowly rose from the couch.

Yuuri’s smile was like yet another Christmas decoration that had sneaked its way into their apartment, all warm and shining and festive.

“ _Thiiiiis year_ …” Yuuri paused and crinkled his brow in thought, trying to remember the words until he decided to go for “ _hm-hm-hm-hm-hmmm..._ ” and came to stand in front of Victor, one arm shooting up to wind around Victor’s neck like he would around a lamp post for support.

“ _I give it to someone special_ …”

Time froze and so did Victor’s arms where they came around Yuuri’s waist almost accidentally because he seemed quite unsteady on his feet.

“Do you dance?” Yuuri asked, and didn’t wait for an answer.

He pulled Victor into a dance around their living room, and how he could still dance so gracefully while he couldn’t walk in a straight line anymore was beyond Victor. Yuuri led him with what could only be natural instinct, and the brave haze of the drunk that made every word a little louder and every touch a little stronger. Victor’s arms gripped Yuuri tighter as their legs bumped into the couch, steadying the both of them and keeping them upright before they could tumble onto the couch in one inelegant heap. They came to a complete standstill, breathing loud in their quiet living room. Victor didn’t let go. He wasn’t sure Yuuri would be able to stand if he did.

Before Victor knew what was happening Yuuri had cupped his face with both hands and planted a kiss on him. Heat rushed to his head and into every cell of his body when their tongues met and played for just a moment, Yuuri licking almost carefully into his mouth, like coaxing him out to play.

“Wow…” Yuuri’s eyes were sparkling when he pulled away. He looked up at Victor as if he had seen the light. “That was nice. You’re so good at this!”

Victor almost laughed. He had done exactly nothing but react to Yuuri kissing him, and now he was still waiting for the ground to stop spinning underneath his feet.

“I have kissed three people in my life…” Yuuri was still talking. God, he was a cute drunk. “Phichit says… you know Phichit, _ne_? Phichit says I have to go for it. But I don’t know the first thing about going for it. You do, don’t you? You can teach me! You can teach me to go for it and all about kissing!”

Next thing Victor knew, Yuuri was hanging onto him with both arms thrown around his neck again, wriggling his crotch so determinedly against Victor’s that Victor instinctively tried to fling his hips back into safety from what he was sure would end in mutual embarrassment very quickly.

“Be my coach, Victooor!”

Victor’s eyes widened. He felt the blush in his cheeks deepen.

Yuuri was looking up at him with eyes and a smile so wide that it would have softened stones into teaching him whatever he could possibly think of. Victor brought his arms up to gently detach Yuuri from himself.

“Oh god.” Yuuri groaned and shook his head in an attempt to clear it. He blinked several times. Victor was sure he had no idea that his glasses sat crooked on his nose. “I’ve had too much mulled wine.”

“You think?” Chuckling, Victor grabbed Yuuri by his upper arms and turned him around very gently, marching him towards his room.

“Sleep,” Yuuri exclaimed at the sight of his bed. A stupid grin took over his face as he turned around to face Victor like he had just made the greatest discovery ever. “This is my bed. Can I sleep?”

“Absolutely.”

Victor retreated from the room when Yuuri started to undress, closing the door very firmly behind him.

Back in the living room, Victor sank down on the couch again and buried his face in his palms. He could still taste Yuuri in his mouth, still felt the sizzling energy of Yuuri’s kiss all over.

“I am _fucked_!” he groaned into his hands.

* * *

The next morning, Victor was sitting at the kitchen table when Yuuri emerged from his room. The dragging sounds of his feet on the floor reminded Victor of a line in a poem he’d once analysed, about a rough beast slouching towards Bethlehem to be born. Yuuri wore a T-shirt and sweatpants as well as his blanket wrapped around his neck like a superhero cape.

“Morning.” Hungover Yuuri had a voice like a bear. He dropped down on the chair to Victor’s right.

“Morning.” Victor kept his face neutral.

“Ugh.” Yuuri’s elbows hit the table as he fell forward and caught himself with his face in his hands, rubbing at his forehead for a moment before he slid them up until he fisted both hands in his severely tousled hair. He had the breath of a bear, too. “I think that sixth mulled wine was too much.”

Victor didn’t say anything. He merely grinned down at the tangerine he was peeling.

Yuuri’s head came up again from the protective shield of his palms. “Did I say or do anything last night? Anything embarrassing?”

Victor shook his head. He looked up with a smile and handed Yuuri one half of the peeled tangerine.

Yuuri mumbled a throaty thank you. He ate the tangerine, and then another half that Victor handed him of the second one he was peeling. Eventually Yuuri got up. Victor watched him from the corner of one eye, moving slowly around the kitchen, wincing sometimes while he made some dry toast and tea. Drank a glass of tap water with an aspirin dissolved in it. Victor held his breath when Yuuri opened the fridge. This was not how he had planned for this to happen. But Yuuri didn’t seem to notice the cake box Victor had placed right in the middle of the top tier of the fridge, pushing each of their stuff out of the way and in some places had even dared to put them together so there was enough room.

Or he was simply too hungover to care. He took a bottle of the mineral water he kept in the fridge because he liked it best when it was very cold and closed the fridge. Then Yuuri shuffled back to his room, plate of toast in one hand, bottle of water in the other. His door closed behind him, and silence settled over the apartment.

Victor spent a very traditional Christmas Day - eating and watching TV on the couch. The evening saw him back in the kitchen to make another cup of tea. He watered the poinsettia with a measuring cup while he waited for the water to boil, then while he let the tea steep he poured over the last couple of _oreshki_ on their plate on the kitchen table. They looked so forlorn on the big plate, he thought he might as well eat them and release them from their misery. Soon all but one had found their way into his mouth.

“Those were actually for your birthday.”

Victor swung around at the sound of the voice.

“I should have known they wouldn’t last that long.” Yuuri pushed himself off the frame where he was leaning in his open door. His hair was tousled from a day he had clearly spent in bed sleeping off his hangover, his clothes a little crumpled. But his eyes looked like a vivid replay of the night before. Clear. Sparkling. Dancing. His gaze darted quickly to the TV screen, where Victor’s favourite Christmas movie was on again, one of its dozen replays over the Christmas days. Yuuri knew the schedule off by heart.

His eyes returned to Victor, who was still standing by the kitchen table, hand poised in mid-air where he had been about to reach for the last of the _oreshki_. He lowered his arm slowly now.

“Yuuri.” He smiled. “Feel better?”

Yuuri crossed the distance from his room to the kitchen, his legs tingling with the need to move to the music winding from the TV speakers. They wanted that waltz.

_He_ wanted that waltz.

“Dance with me, Victor.”

Victor swallowed hard. Resort to humour, he thought, and held up the last nut-shaped cookie. “Do you mind? I have one final wish.”

Yuuri swallowed too. He blushed like a person who knew he would feel embarrassed and brave saying whatever they were going to say next. “I think you won’t need it but go ahead.”

Victor put the cookie back on the plate and took a step closer, completing Yuuri’s unfinished position.

They danced through the kitchen and into the living room and back, Yuuri letting Victor lead, spin him around to the slow, dreamy tune winding from the TV speakers. When they were almost back in the spot they had started from, they each took a step back, bowed like they were caught in the fairytale on TV with all its manners, laughing. Their hands were still connected. And then they pulled each other close.

“Since when has this been here?”

Yuuri pointed upwards at the mistletoe at the ceiling. He couldn’t take his eyes off of Victor’s, but he knew the mistletoe was there. He had spotted it when he bent backwards as Victor dipped him while dancing.

“The Christmas deco was not complete,” Victor said. He reached past Yuuri for the plate on the table again with his free hand, but the fingers of his other hand remained wound around Yuuri’s by their sides, his eyes remained locked with Yuuri’s.

Yuuri’s mouth slowly widened into a grin while he watched Victor bring the last of the _oreshki_ to his mouth.

“You don’t trust my magic nuts?”

Victor almost choked on the cookie at Yuuri’s words.

But Yuuri was there, much too close for a roommate, for a friend even. He was so close that he could wind one of his arms around Victor and pat his back a couple of times until Victor stopped coughing. He was so close that Victor felt the warmth coming off his body. And once his eyes stopped tearing up, Victor also saw every single star dancing in Yuuri’s.

“I think I’ll need another birthday present for you now,” Yuuri said. The hand on Victor’s back started moving in slow, maddening caresses. Danced around his shoulder and skimmed across the column of his neck. By the time he cupped his cheek with one hand, Victor felt like he was on fire, every nerve end a trembling little flame. Victor could feel them both breathing. It was not very steady. Yuuri brought up his other hand.

“So, nothing embarrassing?” he asked quietly. “What I said and did last night?”

Victor moved just the smallest inch closer. “Nothing embarrassing at all.”

“Not even _this_?” Yuuri asked and kissed him.

Victor felt the heat of the night before, only much stronger because he knew this time Yuuri was sober, and very conscious of what he was doing. He was out to set every cell of Victor’s body on fire, and he consumed him whole. Yuuri licked almost teasingly into his mouth, coaxing him out to play. Like he remembered the caution of the night before. Like his body remembered. He took his breath away, Victor thought as he kissed Yuuri back with all his repressed feelings, turning the hopeless into something more than just hope.

When they pulled apart Victor felt regret wash over him and held on tight to Yuuri.

“Nothing embarrassing,” he repeated when their foreheads touched, skin glowing, mouth widened in smiles.

“Happy birthday, Victor,” Yuuri said.

“The happiest,” Victor smiled. “And merry Christmas.”

There it was, the little Yuuri scowl that Victor found so adorable. Brown eyes flickered sideways to where the fridge was, then back towards Victor’s face.

“There’s a Japanese Christmas cake in the fridge.” Yuuri frowned.

Victor cleared his throat. “I don’t want you to have to lose any limbs. You need them for dancing.”

“ _You_ made that?” Behind his glasses, Yuuri’s eyes grew wide.

“I had help.” Victor nipped at Yuuri’s bottom lip with his mouth. The tip of his tongue darting across the softness of Yuuri’s lips made Yuuri shudder in his arms. Interesting, Victor thought.

“I _knew_ the lady from the bakery downstairs is soft for you!” Yuuri’s mock outrage was delightful.

Victor grinned. “She knows where to get decent strawberries here in winter. It’s good to know people like this. If it’s any comfort - it was weird watching someone else baking without you.”

“I missed the Celebrity Bake-Off finale,” Yuuri sighed. “Because I was at Sophie’s after she sprained her ankle.”

“I know. I taped it. We can watch it together.” Victor decided to keep the rest of that evening a secret.

“Who won?”

“Don’t know. I was waiting for you, Yuuri.”

He wondered if Yuuri knew he was not just talking about the Bake-Off finale.

Yuuri’s expression softened. “Took you long enough.”

Definitely not just talking about the Bake-Off finale, Victor thought.

“So did they work?” Yuuri smiled again. “The _oreshki?_ ”

They were still so close, right by their kitchen table under the mistletoe. Victor took his hands off of Yuuri’s waist but pushed his knee further between Yuuri’s legs where he pinned him against the table. His hands came around Yuuri’s face. Yuuri felt soft and warm under his touch, and better than he had imagined.

“Like a charm,” Victor smiled back. “All my wishes came true.”

Holding Yuuri’s face with both hands, Victor claimed his mouth in a kiss. He felt his heart skip and jump from his chest, perhaps, but Yuuri caught it, right there where the space between them was only as wide as Yuuri needed room for his hands to fist in the front of Victor’s sweater, right above his heart. One of Yuuri’s legs curled around him, the slide of a heel over his calf so enticing that Victor was pretty sure to be writing one of his next poems about just that.

Or about the way Yuuri opened up so willingly to his kiss, allowed his tongue inside to play and arouse, to promise. There was a lingering sweetness of the last cookie in their kiss, delicious caramel and premonition of all the wishes come true. And a whole different sweetness of something new.

**Author's Note:**

> P.S. ... and the next evening Victor brought his roommate-come-boyfriend Yuuri along to his best friend's birthday party. <3
> 
> * * * * * * * * *
> 
> [This](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICRqekAqhTw) is the music from the movie, in case anyone is wondering. :)


End file.
